Brown Note

Medusa was a stone cold killer. A sound, image, or written work that has a physical or psychological effect on anyone who hears/sees/reads it. This can range from wounding/killing someone, causing them to go insane, or become obsessed with the Brown Note to the exclusion of all other things (including eating, drinking, sleeping, and yes, even troping). Usually, we don't get to see or hear it ourselves.note Possibly, it is a type of MacGuffin. A Brown Note is a sensory input that is inherently harmful. Named for the urban legend about an audio tone that, when played, causes the listener to lose control of their bowels and spontaneously defecate. If it's not harmful itself, but summons or draws the attention of a harmful entity, then it's a Speak of the Devil. See also Loud of War, Make Me Wanna Shout and Musical Assassin for specific forms of sound-based attack. For a practical application in science fiction to showcase harmful energy sources, try Showing Off The Perilous Power Source. Compare and contrast Made of Evil. When it is specifically a book, it can be a Tome of Eldritch Lore or a form of Reality Writing Book. Musical examples are extreme cases of Hell Is That Noise, Ear Worm or possibly The Power of Rock. See also Magic Music. A lighter version used for torture would be Cool and Unusual Punishment. Can overlap with Suckiness Is Painful, when the note is a really bad work. Compare Words Can Break My Bones, some of which have similar effects given by single words, written or spoken, and are by magic. See also Weapons-Grade Vocabulary if its simply straight words, spoken or read. Contrast with Gale Force Sound, where the sound has a physical effect, not a psychological one, and Incessant Music Madness, where repetitive music drives a person to distraction. If you aren't affected right off the bat, perhaps You Cannot Grasp the True Form or You Are Already Dead. Nightmare Face

"Can I be scary? Well, whaddya think of this?"

The human face is supremely important on a social and biological level. Most of our non-verbal communication comes from reading subtle facial movements, and its importance in our cognitive thinking is best shown in our tendency to see faces in inanimate objects (think of how many times you've looked at a rock face and thought you'd seen two eyes and a mouth). So there's something genuinely disturbing to most people about seeing a face visibly distorted, mutated, or rearranged ... so, naturally, this type of Body Horror is one of the most common Horror Tropes. It is in fact at least Older Than Feudalism armies the world over have based their war masks around this trope, and in mythology and folklore, just about any self-respecting demon or supernatural evil will have one. More recently, it has also become a staple of Surreal Horror. This is a main symptom of Coming Back Wrong. Most humanoid examples of Our Monsters Are Weird will fit this trope. Sub Tropes include:

Black Eyes of Crazy Black Eyes of Evil. Glasgow Grin Glowing Eyelights of Undeath The Blank Eyeless Face Facial Horror Red Eyes, Take Warning Slasher Smile Two-Faced

See also:

This trope's well-meaning (but still scary) sister, The Grotesque Uncanny Valley, which usually ends up here by accident. Game Face, which comes into play when a supernatural villain disguised as a human flashes his true form's Nightmare Face to scare someone. Demon Head, cousin to this trope. Take Our Word for It, when the face is too grotesque to even show.

Interesting tidbit: this is one theory as to why so many people are afraid of clowns. Exaggerated mouths, bulbous noses, and pin-prick eyes are downright terrifying to young children who haven't yet figured out that the person is wearing make-up and not deformed. Take Our Word for It "Uh, remember us? The audience? Can we see it, please?" Tom Servo, Mystery Science Theater 3000: Pod People

Yeah, because we can never get to see how awesome that book within the book really isnote When something inside a show is supposed to be breathtakingly good or astonishingly bad - such as a really moving poem or a really hideous person - a frequent strategy is to not show it at all, to instead give us only the characters' reactions. This allows the audience to imagine exactly how good/bad it is, where an actual example might have fallen flat. This trope is sometimes used in the horror genre as a character reacts with terror and/or at some unseen menace or horrific scene. Sometimes The Reveal actually happens later in the form of a flashback or other device. This can be anticlimactic if the actor's reaction is played especially well or if the source of the character's horror just doesn't impress the audience as much. While the trope is an effective tool for both horror and comedy, it can come across as a violation of Show, Don't Tell if it is used poorly. This trope is Older Than Feudalism, dating back to The Iliad where Helen is never fully described, especially by the standards of the rest of the work which has long, detailed descriptions of just about everything. Naturally, almost always used with a Brown Note. See also Undisclosed Funds, Hiroshima As a Unit of Measure, Ultimate Evil, Noodle Incident, Informed Ability, Orphaned Punchline, Lost In Transmission, You Cannot Grasp the True Form, You Do NOT Want To Know, Head-Tiltingly Kinky, Offscreen Afterlife, Offscreen Moment of Awesome, Narrative Profanity Filter and Nothing Is Scarier. Compare Showing Off The Perilous Power Source, where the characters are the ones who can't have the direct experience, and Great

Offscreen War, where a vast budget-busting world-changing war is only obliquely referred to as backstory. Nothing Is Scarier

I'll give you ten bucks if you go first. "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." H.P. Lovecraft A Horror trope where fear is not induced by some traumatic visual element or by a physical threat, but by the sole lack of event. This is a case of rampant creepiness, associated not with what is happening, but with the general atmosphere of a scene. When properly done, it can result in one of the scariest moments. It does so for one simple reason, the author refuses to show us what is causing this scariness but we desperately wish to know what, so our minds fill in the blanks. It often has to do with where the events are happening, generally because said place is just inherently scary somehow, but sometimes merely because of the way it is filmed or described. This trope comes in three flavors:

The classic version, where the Nothing is Scarier moment serves to build up suspense and tension, until something scary suddenly jumps at you from nowhere. It has been done a million times, and is often poorly executed, ending up with the killer/monster/whatever apparition being less scary than the preceding sequence.note Many times, what the directors do is make the character look around with some small light source (flashlight, cellphone, camera flashes) for that mystery noise and then suddenly turn around right when the suspense music reaches that peak. Of course, they sigh when they see nothing... and then they turn around again... The full version is when there is really nothing happening, but the result can be several orders of magnitude scarier than the classic version, because the audience is left to imagine what could have happened. The rarely used third variation is where there's nothing there... nothing there... nothing there... and then you realize there is something there, and it's been there all along.

For both versions, scary music can be used to reinforce the effect, but it seems to work best when there's no music at all. The camera might slowly close in on the "nothing", either as a character musters the courage to open the door, enter the dark depths, or cowers abjectly at the impenetrable darkness. This trope can be used in combination with many other tropes; Through the Eyes of Madness, Darkness Equals Death, Quieter Than Silence, Leave the Camera Running, Mind Screw are just some examples. Since the space is very, very empty, it may also appear as a part of Space Madness, usually as the second variant. Anything will do as long as the result is scary. Paranoia Fuel is a near-must, though. In Real Life this trope is why it's so scary to walk through even a familiar dark room by yourself, or through the woods on a dark night. This is one horror trope everyone is familiar with. Compare and contrast The Unreveal, Cat Scare, Jump Scare, Ultimate Evil, And I Must Scream, Monster Delay, Gory Discretion Shot, and Daylight Horror. One of the counterarguments against leaving nothing to the imagination, and sometimes an argument against Gorn as well. Not to be confused with Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here, Empty Room Psych, or It's Quiet... Too Quiet. Through the Eyes of Madness

"Do you believe in magic..." Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today Oh how I wish he'd go away. Hughes Mearns

Life is going good. Oh, okay you might be a little stressed out or a little down in the dumps but it's nothing serious. Then things start going wrong. You see a face on the outside of a tenstory window; an impostor seems to be taking your place at home; the same white-eyed man keeps watching you from a distance; a tramp gives you proof that your neighbour is a demon, but the proof disappears soon after (as does the tramp). You try to gather proof, you try to convince your wife, but she doesn't believe you. None of them believe you. They say you're crazy, but you're not crazy. Not at all. It's them making everyone think that. And they replaced your wife with one of them, so you had to kill it. You wouldn't kill your wife, would you? Would you? Of course not. It's all real. It has to be, because otherwise you'd be seeing Through the Eyes of Madness. The creepy, foul-smelling uncle of the Cuckoo Nest, this trope makes a point of obscuring the objective truth of the tale in order to screw with the audience's minds. Sure, we see the grotesque tendril moving under the neighbor's skin just like the protagonist does, but who says the camera is telling the truth? Then again, there's never any conclusive proof that he's not a monster either. By their very nature, these stories end without any definite decision as to what was really going on. Compare to Only Sane Man; in it the Only Sane Man, along with the audience, is sure that the strange thing is real and everyone else just turns a blind eye on it, while this leaves it ambiguous. Another key difference is that trope is often used for comedic effect while this trope is horrific if done properly. Unlike the Cuckoo Nest, there isn't an "either/or" pair of realities that can be switched between, or a truthful reality waiting to be accessed just a long, horrible descent into the darkness of the human mind. Compare Unreliable Narrator, for instances in which this character is telling the story. Is often Paranoia Fuel at its purest, if done well. Contrast Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane. If madness gives a person the ability to see real things that others can't, that's a variety of Power Born of Madness. If it's clear that it's not all in the protagonist's mind and the danger is real, then the main character is Properly Paranoid. If the madness conceals the fact that the protagonist is a murderer, that's The Killer In Me. Expect some spoilers here. In many works, the fact that the viewpoint character is crazy is a major Twist Ending. You Cannot Grasp the True Form

"Words describing it fail. Pages relating it shrivel. Tales recounting it end." Nemesis of Reason flavour text, Magic: The Gathering Imagine if some non-human entity, such as, let's say, TV Tropes Wiki, became a threedimensional living entity with self-awareness and consciousness, that wanted to sit down and have a lovely little chat. What would it look like? Like a surprisingly feminine, charming little sprite named Trope-Tan? Walls and walls of binary code that resolve themselves into a houselike shape? Or perhaps a whole universe, a world, complete in and of itself? At some point in the conversation, the personification of TV Tropes drops a little Mind Screw in your tea: you are not looking at, or conversing with, all that TV Tropes is. You are not even seeing an illusion that TV Tropes is projecting into your mind. Rather, the sheer awesomeness of TV Tropes, the might and immense hideousness of it, bypass your eyes and occipital lobe entirely, and your mind meekly registers it as the closest, safest, yet still comparable thing on hand.note You Cannot Grasp The True Form, or else you will Go Mad from the Revelation. Related to Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, and sometimes Alien Geometries. Often a property possessed by the Eldritch Abomination. If everyone who fails to grasp the True Form sees something different, it's an example of Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder. When someone is in a truly outlandish environment, their brain will just make up stuff for them to see. Usually an excuse for the artist not to have to draw the weird other-dimensional stuff. See also A Form You Are Comfortable With, Ultimate Evil, Hyperspace Is a Scary Place, and Weirdness Censor.

He Who Must Not Be Seen A regular or Recurring Character that is never seen on screen. There are three variants: The Voice, The Ghost, and The Faceless. See also Ultimate Evil. Compare with He Who Must Not Be Heard. These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know
aka: Things Man Was Not Meant To Know

"Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow." Victor Frankenstein, Frankenstein Do not read this page. Just click "back", or close this page right now. Your sanity, nay the fate of all mankind, will be in danger. You didn't listen. Damn you. Don't you know this knowledge was kept secret for a reason? Your feeble, mortal minds cannot comprehend the vast complexity of what you are seeking to learn. Pray that complete madness is the worst consequence of your transgression. Just don't blame us. You Have Been Warned. If you still wish to go further, then see the tropes that this Super Trope has unleashed!

Alien Geometries Forms Man Was Not Meant To Comprehend. Artifact of Doom Stuff Man Was Not Meant To Use. Brown Note Stimuli Man Was Not Meant To Experience. Eldritch Abomination Things Man Was Not Meant To Meet.

Poke in the Third Eye Beings Man Was Not Meant To Scry. Tome of Eldritch Lore Books Man Was Not Meant To Read. You Cannot Grasp the True Form Things Man Was Not Meant To Comprehend Even After He Was Foolish Enough To Look At Them.

It's a pretty safe guess, though don't confirm it, that these things resemble Mind Screw and are a Mind Rape. Learning this can cause you to Go Mad from the Revelation, and is a standard trope of a Cosmic Horror Story. A major reason on why Curiosity Is a Crapshoot. If you can even read and/or understand these final words, pity the Mad Scientist who seeks out this knowledge, for his experiments will Go Horribly Right. Not to be confused with You Do NOT Want To Know. If your mind has become a horrifying alien monstrosity by this point, avoid interacting with humans, Humanity Is Infectious. For things that men (the gender) are not supposed to know see Women's Mysteries. Go Mad from the Revelation

"I just want to find a pub!" "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." The Call of Cthulhu In many stories, there are some experiences that are so horribly mind-shattering that the usual result is stark raving madness. We're not just talking about mundane Shell Shock here, that'd be the trope called Heroic BSOD. Instead we're talking about a full-fledged Freak Out, or possibly even as bad as a Face Heel Turn. If you Go Mad From The Revelation, you're gonna have some sort of psychotic break. This is a signature characteristic of an Eldritch Abomination and one of the central tropes of the Cosmic Horror genre, but other things can cause it as well, such as prolonged torture or learning some other Thing that Man Was Not Meant to Know. There is generally a distinction between things that happen to the mind because of experience and things that are done to the brain. This trope is the former. Thus, insanity caused by drugs or a specific, quasi-magical effect (like a Brown Note) doesn't qualify. Contrast those things with the

Shoggoths, who strain people's sanity in spite of never having that as a stated special ability the thought of them is just that horrible. Confronting a Creature From Beyond The Stars or a Thing That Should Not Exist will lead either to psychological regression into denial, or insanity when the cognitive dissonance becomes too great. H.P. Lovecraft was fond of these; his stories abound with creatures from regions of space where the known laws of nature do not apply, and geometries that violate the laws of physics. This almost could have been Truth in Television, insofar as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a real mental illness, but a character who Goes Mad From the Revelation usually is portrayed in a more generic insanity. Sometimes, if you whack someone with the "insane stick" enough times, they'll get Bored With Insanity. The main inspiration for this trope is the work of H.P. Lovecraft, whose story The Call of Cthulhu is the Trope Namer. Occurs in most of his work and a good deal of Lovecraft-inspired work that use Mad Gods and Eldritch Abominations, indeed Cthulhu-inspired RPGs often make this a game mechanic. Will be absent from stories where you can punch out Cthulhu. Mostly. The extreme form of a Freak Out. May take the form of a Heroic BSOD where the thing isn't going to start working again. If the whole nature of the universe is opened to you because of your velocity, this is Ludicrous Speed. Compare with Brain Bleach and My God, What Have I Done?. See also A Form You Are Comfortable With for a way to avoid this. Cosmic Horror Story

Image

courtesy of yohkai

. Used with permission.

"Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large." H.P. Lovecraft Imagine a universe where even the tiniest spot of hope for the future is blindness in itself, the insane Straw Nihilist yelling about The End of the World as We Know It in the asylum is actually the only one with a clue, and too much curiosity about the true nature of the world is a

precursor to a Fate Worse than Death. A universe where humanity is preyed upon as a mere plaything for all kinds inconceivable horrors, and all our ideals are naught but cruel illusions; a universe which was once ruled by such eldritch abominations from the depths of space long ago. Nor are they dead; they merely wait, and soon they shall wake. They shall return to rule this world, and all our grandest achievements shall have been in vain. For all our blind hubris we are but mice in the wainscoting, making merry while the cat's awaybut even today, the world is more dangerous than we may know. Take one step away from the comforts of home, and you will find terror and madness on every nook and corner dark cults, hideous monstrosities, truths so terrible that none may comprehend them and remain sane. Demons gibber in the tunnels beneath your feet. Parasites and worms slither unseen in whatever food or drink you dare put into your mouth. Ghosts hover unseen and unheard around you, discerning and mocking your every thoughts and secrets. The vile essence of an alien disease lurks in the recesses of your own family tree, a genetic time bomb just waiting to go off... Such was the vision of H.P. Lovecraft, pioneer of the Cosmic Horror Story. Our victories are hollow and our doom is certain, for we struggle not against ordinary monsters, but something else entirely. It's possible that they don't even notice our existence; they're simply so unstoppable that their mere passing obliterates worlds, or worse, and we happen to be the world in question. A Cosmic Horror Story doesn't just scare you with big, ugly monstersthough it can certainly have themit depresses you with the fatalistic implication of being insignificantly powerless before such vast, unknowable and fundamentally alien entities. On the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, it sometimes lies near the cynical Despair Event Horizon. If you aren't sure if a work is a Cosmic Horror Story or not, ask yourself these questions:

Is the antagonist evil or uncaring on a cosmic scale? We're talking a Big Bad who is capable of destroying humanity, planet Earth, the universe, or all three and doing so with very little or no preparation and/or intent, and with about as much effort as it takes to swat a mosquito that's landed on your arm. Is the attitude of the antagonist towards humanity disregard, simple pragmatism, or incidental hatred? (A godlike antagonist that actively hates humanity and its works is more in line with Rage Against the Heavens or God Is Evil.) Does the antagonist have a worldview and motivations that doesn't really seem to take humanity into account? Are the motivations of the antagonist difficult to explain using human terms? Are the antagonist or its minions so alien in appearance or mentality that simply being near them or seeing them is sufficient to drive a human to madness? Are the antagonist or its minions indescribable -- literally? Lines like "I cannot find the words to describe the vile thing I saw..." are a hallmark of Cosmic Horror Stories. Is the tone of the work deeply pessimistic about the possibility of the antagonist being defeated completely? If it isn't, the work is more likely to be Lovecraft Lite.

Answering "No" to more than two of these means that the work is probably not a Cosmic Horror Story, although it may share tropes with the genre.

Common tropes in Cosmic Horror Stories include:

Above Good and Evil

Alien Geometries Apocalyptic Log Body Horror Beneath the Earth Blue and Orange Morality Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu Brown Note Closed Circle The Dark Times Diabolus ex Machina Diabolus Ex Nihilo Dug Too Deep Eldritch Abomination Eldritch Location Go Mad from the Revelation God Is Evil Half-Human Hybrid Humans Are Morons Insignificant Little Blue Planet Lovecraft Country/Campbell Country Lovecraft Lite Mad God Mind Rape Mythopoeia: Most Eldritch Abominations do not derive from folklore. That said, there are quite a few of them that created folklore accidentally. Planetary Parasite Psychological Horror Puny Earthlings Puppeteer Parasite Sealed Evil in a Can These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know Through the Eyes of Madness Time Abyss Tome of Eldritch Lore Town with a Dark Secret Ultimate Evil The Unpronounceable You Cannot Grasp the True Form

The genre is sometimes called "Cosmic Horror", Lovecraftian Fiction, or Weird Fiction. Very likely to use Paranoia Fuel. A Despair Event Horizon or a Downer Ending can be used to add to the depressing atmosphere. Compare/contrast with Gothic Horror (on which prose the first Cosmic Horror Stories, like those from Lovecraft himself, borrowed) Crapsack World, Mind Screw and Through the Eyes of Madness. Note that while the Cthulhu Mythos Shared Universe originated in the Cosmic Horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, a Cosmic Horror Story need not refer to the Mythos or borrow from its imagery.

Lovecraft Lite goes a step further than that and does not expect us to take Lovecraft's vision seriously in the first place. Eldritch Abomination You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension, I am Sovereign. [...] We are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. [...] My kind transcends your very understanding. We are each a nation, independent, free of all weaknesses. You cannot even grasp the nature of our existence. Sovereign, Mass Effect How to describe these grotesque mockeries of natural law? There are no words that can encompass such disgusting foulness, not in English or any other human tongue. They are The Other. The Inconceivable. Alien beyond comprehension, their sole existence is an affront to all reason. We could speak of painfully dissonant noises and nauseating colours, or of complex mathematics and daemonic geometries, or of ichor-dripping vermiform tentacles and abyssal yonic voids, but those are mere superficialities. Monstrous and sick though these stigmata are, they do not define the abominations; they are merely among some of the more common symptoms of their underlying wrongness. Eldritch Abominations are not simply creatures that look horrible on a metaphorically cosmic scale. They are alien, madness-inducing distorters of Reality who literally are horrible on a cosmic scale. Eldritch is not just anything that looks like an ugly mashup of different kinds of Body Horror. What actually defines the Eldritch Abominations (or as we Homo sapiens can only define them) is their defiance of natural law, as humans understand it. They are the things that should not be, the ultimate aliens. It is this that makes them abominable, and it is this that horrifies and reduces to gibbering madness all but the strongest of those who encounter them. Such laws as they do obey, such as When The Planets Align or Sealed Evil in a Can, are their mysterious nature, not ours. They are native to the genre known as Cosmic Horror Story, but they are not confined to it. Mild examples can be found throughout the horror and fantasy genres. Greater abominations can occur in almost any type of fiction, so long as enough Cosmic Horror Story tropes are used. Usually they derive, at least in inspiration, from Lovecraft's work. Physically, Eldritch Abominations range from almost human, to animal-like, through big ugly monsters, to the unimaginably bizarre. Generally, the weirder they look, the more powerful they are, but this isn't a universal rule. Here, the "ugly" in "big, ugly monster" doesn't just mean that it's horrible to look at it means that there's something about it, about the way it looks, or the spaces through which it moves, that violates every law of reality as you know it. "Big" doesn't just mean that it could use the Empire State Building as a toothpick it means that the...thing doing just that is only the barest fraction of the monster's true form, the 3-dimensional tip of a multidimensional iceberg. Eldritch abominations are perhaps the biological equivalent of Absolute Comparative: they are uglier, they are bigger, and they are more powerful than anything else in existence. Some abominations are so eldritch that even lesser abominations find them abominable. Some look approximately human, but just reading their name condemns you to Mind Rape. If you see one of these in the flesh, it's too late to run. The most eldritch of the abominations come from Beyond. Whether they are from beyond the stars, before the dawn of time, or a place incomprehensible to humans, they are alien to this universe and its laws. The creatures may actually outnumber humanity trillions may dwell in

the Stygian abysses far below the ocean waves, trillions of trillions may drift between the stars but they prefer wild and lonely places, where people seldom tread. Slightly milder abominations can get an exemption, provided the reality-screwing does not override all of their rules and set a permanent stellar battle that anything that gets close dies horribly over a long period of time with so much excessive Mind Rape (Serial Escalation, anyone?) that Brain Bleach will be necessary. They are also typically the descendants of greater abominations or the work of mad wizards or mad scientists who harnessed another dimension's powers. These include some of the rarer varieties of undead, so long as they are rare and the product of ill-advised breeding programs. This trope has some overlap with Starfish Aliens. However, Starfish Aliens aren't necessarily horrific or unnatural; they're alien only because they evolved in a different environment than humanity and can be helpful or neutral, whereas Eldritch Abominations have a deep wrongness to them, no matter where you find them. For example, while Starfish Aliens are usually willing to take on a A Form You Are Comfortable With to avoid breaking your mind if they can, most Eldritch Abominations won't even acknowledge/realize you have one to break (and the rest either can't or won't care). Eldritch Abominations will rarely be seen by people; showing them too often can make them seem less unfathomable and closer to basic Starfish Aliens. No self-respecting fantasy RPG seems to do without one or more of these (except some of the Evil Witchking villain variety, and even then, not always). Typically, Eldritch Abominations in Video Games aren't depicted as omnipotent and implacable. But if they were, one of their attacks would take out ALL of your H.P. And destroy your computer, or at least delete the game, in the process. Note that while normally used as an Antagonist, Eldritch Abominations can be helpful or neutral, though most of them are way beyond the whole alignment system and are merely uncaring or incomprehensible, treating Earth as at best a colorful plaything and at worst... they're absolutely insane Omnicidal Maniacs. If an Eldritch Abomination exists in a story where the primary antagonist is of a more human scale, it's probably the Bigger Bad. See God of Evil, Demon Lords and Archdevils, The Legions of Hell, and The Fair Folk for supernatural horrors that are knowingly malevolent rather than simply alien and amoral. When their appearance is uncomfortably human-like, see Humanoid Abomination (or, perhaps, The Fair Folk), but never expect them to be any nicer, though. Some are animal-like. When humans are regarded as THIS by non-humans, this is a case of Humans Are Cthulhu. Remotely related to Ludicrous Speed, which will break your brain in a similar fashion. Also, Our Monsters Are Weird, Eldritch Location, and Divide by Zero, which often overlap with this, thanks to their nature. See Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? when one of these abominations have their ass handed to them. So far as we know, no Real Life examples exist. Thank to the nature of this trope, the potential examples are very vague and questionable at best. And thus, No Real Life Examples, Please! Once again, please note that a character/creature merely being extremely ugly is not, in and of itself, an example of this trope. Nightmare Fuel

From the director's nightmares to yours! "What do you fear?" Fear Factory, "Fear Campaign" This is the stuff so horrifying that it can give people the creeps for years. This scares the pants off of just about anyone to the author/creator's delight. This makes you shrink in the back of your chair, look over your shoulder, and remind yourself that what's going on is (usually) only fictional. For many horror films, achieving this effect is the whole point (and many in-universe examples arise because Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films). For some reason, many of us like to be scared on purpose. There may be a euphoria generated by surviving something that seems scary, or maybe we know that fiction can't hurt us and the idea of choosing to be scared without the danger is fun. Some think it's cathartic or therapeutic in some way to explore our fears from a position of relative safety. In any case, this is normal for the genre. Others are fascinated by the very things that most people avoid. Occasionally, it overlaps with Squick. Similarly, some Public Service Announcements choose to employ terrifying imagery in order to keep people away from doing dangerous things. These can be sources of Fridge Horror as well, as those from different cultures or eras past can demonstrate some intensely creepy Family Unfriendly Aesops. On the other hand, Nightmare Fuel doesn't exist just in the horror genre and is not always the main focus of the films and shows in which it is present. In the case of such movies and shows where Nightmare Fuel or anything related to horror is far from the norm, it can be unsettling when it does occur due to the stark contrast, especially if the genre of the film or show is far from horror, such as comedy or animation, or when in a show with a very specific target demographic. Experiences may vary from person to person. Some people, for example, may find the invasion of monstrosities which are treated as benign to be a far more terrifying prospect than things which we need to explicitly fear. Think the difference between the monster who lives under your bed when you're grown up versus the monster who lives under your bed and fist-bumps your parents when you were a young child.

This is an Audience Reaction, so leave it on YMMV and Nightmare Fuel tabs and don't get too worked up about what specifically goes into it what's Nightmare Retardant for one person may well be Nightmare Fuel for another. Some examples of things that are generally Nightmare Fuel include but are not limited to the following:

Surreal sequences, usually animated. o Surreal due to the Uncanny Valley. Extreme violence and deaths. The disgusting images associated with Nausea Fuel. Unsettling body structures, human or not. Nightmare Sequence, disturbing dream sequences and hallucinations straight out of a nightmare. Horrifically mutated, distorted, injured, or... unreal faces. Paranoia Fuel when things that should be harmless, or on your side, turn nasty. Primal Fears: possibly the most universally frightening of the mix; stuff that generally everyone gets the creeps from. Includes but is not limited to: o The dark. o The unknown. o Swarms of fear-inducing animals such as rats, snakes, spiders or insects. o Being buried alive... or eaten alive. o Being raped - especially by something that isn't human. o People being set on fire, or fire endangering the lives of people while they struggle to escape. o Being drowned, particularly if it's done very slowly... o Being trapped without escape with a violent and/or unpredictable human/animal/thing that wants to harm you. Adult Fears. Those things children seldom worry about: economic failure, romantic failure, watching helplessly as your children die, or possibly even The End of the World as We Know It. Transformation Sequences with plenty of Body Horror, including Chest Bursters. Rotting corpses, possibly reanimated. Diseases. They have no intelligence to bear anyone ill will, but once an infection/outbreak occurs, the attack will never stop until they are completely annihilated... or their victims are. Mutilation of specific body parts, such as the eyes, face, fingers, teeth, genitalia, or even worse than those injuries. Fates so horrific one can only wish for death. Being turned into stone, being trapped in another dimension, being encased in a tomb for eternity, being forcefully made into a machine without consent, or worse... A sexual or romantic obsession with someone that goes too far. The incredible depravity and monstrosity of human beings at their absolute worst. Psychotic behavior presented in a disturbingly childish, calm, or serene manner, alluding to the potential inhumane nature of the individual. Former heroes committing completely reprehensible acts both willingly or worse unwillingly.

Surreal monsters and Eldritch Abominations that have horrific appearances. Soundtrack Dissonance, when used correctly, can make a scene extremely horrifying. Being pregnant with an Eldritch Abomination or other evil entity, or your child becoming one of these things. Losing all reason or willpower to continue living. A totalitarian authority of any kind so harsh that one wishes to die or escape from it. A Crapsack World so vast and immutable that revolution, change, or even escape is a laughable impossibility. Death and destruction. Being inside a living creature. Consumption of people as food. Wanna take that many steps even further? Having your mind played with, be it wiping your memory out, Mind Control, brainwashing, re-enacting past horrific events, invasion of your thoughts, or whatever else comes to mind. Being hunted AND chased endlessly. Think you're safe behind the Fourth Wall because it is Fiction? THINK AGAIN! Disturbing noises. Taxes.

Tropes used to invoke this feeling are Horror Tropes. Tropes about fear are Fear Tropes. If it is unintentionally scary, it's Accidental Nightmare Fuel. If it is meant to scare but fails to deliver, and becomes hilarious instead, it devolves into Nightmare Retardant. Characters that are this InUniverse are The Dreaded. Game Face

Glowing red eyes, tattoos, and a Horror Hunger fueled Death Glare? Boone has his bases covered.

Most supernatural monstrosities and scientific sins against nature that maintain a Masquerade can hide their true nature with a glamour, or otherwise Shape Shift into a nearly seamless human disguise. Sometimes though, they just want to play with their food. They drop the facade and show their true form, getting scary eyes, growing fangs, horns, Pointy Ears and Femme Fatalons or even claws. The changes can range from the purely cosmetic to the practical. In video games or RPGs, this usually affords attack bonuses or new forms of attack altogether. In film, TV, or literature it usually means any Innocent Bystanders nearby just dropped a rung in the food chain.

This is a common trick for vampires, demons, werewolves, and other monsters. Think of it as a super-fast One-Winged Angel act, but with typically less power than a full transformation. Truth in Television as many are the small, mostly harmless animals whose only means of defense is to suddenly flash vivid colors or markings, or seemingly double in size, or otherwise appear to suddenly change into frightening monsters. Many of them couple this with making sudden terrifying noises for further scaring-the-crap-out-of-enemies-ery. Compare Demon Head. Mind Rape

They're really giving him a headache. "Somewhere on Beta Colony there is an institution. In one room of the institution, there is a man who spends his days and nights screaming at things that only he can see. Things we planted in his mind. They have to keep him in a straitjacket twenty-four hours a day or he'll claw his own eyes out just to make it stop." Lyta Alexander, Babylon 5 A character is attacked by a villain in the most painful non-physical way possible: Their mind and soul are assaulted with painful, horrifying visions, sensations, and/or memories, and their will and sanity broken until afterward they're powerless, hopeless and numb, but not dead, although they may wish they were. Minimal to no sexual contact actually occurs, but as the name indicates, everything else is there to resemble a rape - the ultimate violation of privacy and consent, extreme humiliation that annihilates all sense of self-esteem, near-absolute helplessness even against your very own mind and body, and the corrupt perversion of what could otherwise be a source of identity and joy. The physical attacks won't go very far; all (or most) of the agony is inflicted mentally and emotionally, and it's chilling to see a villain be that cruel. The traumatized victim suffers all of the side-effects afterward almost immediately (such as Despair Event Horizon and Rape Leads To Insanity). May include further sexual symbolism for good measure, such as severe and unfunny Clothing Damage and sinister Double Entendres. Comes in two variations: one is a completely "mundane" but no less horrifying brand of torture that nonetheless breaks a character's mind. The other is the above done via Mind Probe, Psychic Powers, Brown Note, illusions, or seeing something Man Was Not Meant To Know, like for example encountering an Eldritch Abomination; even so much as looking at one of them might

cause permanent damage to sanity. Of course, Mind Rape can also involve forced exposure to mindscrews. Just as Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, a character indulging in the Mind Rape of another character primarily for their own pleasure or enjoyment is a good sign they have crossed the Moral Event Horizon. Doubly so if the sexual symbolism is present. A Well-Intentioned Extremist, Anti-Villain or even the heroes may resort to Mind Rape if circumstances force them to (and will probably regret it with all grief for the rest of their existence), but only the most disgusting lowest of the low shall take a sick enjoyment out of it. The less said of the things that are created when this trope meets Rule 34, the better. Can be a possible cause of I'm Having Soul Pains, and can function as a Stupidity-Inducing Attack. Any character pulling this puts their Mind Over Manners. Heroes will try to protect themselves from these by entering Heroic Safe Mode or trying out some Brain Bleach. Compare Fate Worse than Death, Subtext, and Villainous BSOD. Logic Bomb is what happens when computers (or really rational people) experience this due to encountering and being confused with mindscrews. Contrast with the Care Bear Stare, which assaults the target with happy thoughts, like rainbows and stuff. Not to be confused with More than Mind Control (though Mind Rape can have some elements of this). Also not to be confused with Mind Screw, although sometimes a Mind Screw might leave the audience feeling this way.